


Blood Ties

by octopodian



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Trans Leonard Snart, make the content u want to see in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 10:12:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14258748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopodian/pseuds/octopodian
Summary: Ever since he heard the words “time travel” leave Rip Hunter’s mouth, Leonard Snart had been thinking about how to use it to his advantage. Sure, there were the numerous heists: getting filthy rich was a pleasant upside, but for once, wasn’t his main goal.See, when everything bad in your life was due to one single event, one that’s easy to change, one that, if altered, could save you and your sister from a life of trauma and crime, and you just so happened to have landed exactly 3 days before it happened...Well. Some chances are too good to pass up.





	Blood Ties

Ever since he heard the words “time travel” leave Rip Hunter’s mouth, Leonard Snart had been thinking about how to use it to his advantage. Sure, there were the numerous heists: getting filthy rich was a pleasant upside, but for once, wasn’t his main goal.

See, when everything bad in your life was due to one single event, one that’s easy to change, one that, if altered, could save you and your sister from a life of trauma and crime, and you just so happened to have landed exactly 3 days before it happened...

Well. Some chances are too good to pass up.

 

❄

 

He slides his cold gun back into his thigh holster and grins, the adrenaline still giving him a pleasant buzz. He tugs his goggles down to around his neck, giving Jax a wave as he re-enters the jumpship. 

He always did love a museum job.

“That's what I call a clean heist!” Mick crows.

“Thanks for not setting the museum on fire, partner!” Mick grunts in response. “And you, Jax? Thanks for being our getaway driver.”

“Speaking of, let's get the hell back to the ship.” Jax says anxiously, swiveling around to face the control panel.

“Oh,” he holds a finger up, “One more stop.”

“What're you talking about, boss?” Mick scrunches up his eyebrows.

“1629 Handley Avenue,” he says nonchalantly.

“What's on Handley Avenue?”

“It's where we grew up.” Call him thick all you want: Mick is fully capable of putting two and two together. “That's why you wanted to steal the Maximilian Emerald.”

“Mick, enough!”

“You wanted to give it to your old man so he wouldn't go to jail trying to steal it for himself.”

“Your father was a thief too?” Jax says, glancing between the two of them.

“And unfortunately, not a very good one.” Len says coldly, still glaring at Mick. He seems utterly unphased, damn him.

“Didn't Rip say something about not messing with the timeline?” Of course Mick would choose now, of all times, to care about what Rip says.

“You could accidently blink yourself out of existence. You're screwing with history here, man.” Jax seems genuinely concerned.

“Yeah, well, history screwed with me first,” he hisses. No one argued with his glare.

 

❄

 

Snart hasn’t seen his old home in years. He remembers it as a awful place, full of drunk and loud friends of his dad that yelled late into the night, but this is different, if only slightly. This is the childhood version: the nostalgic one.

He closes the door gently, scanning his surroundings.

Cards, cigarettes, and beer bottles are scattered across the kitchen table. More beer bottles in the kitchen sink. He reaches to pick one up, on instinct, before withdrawing his hand.

Nostalgic doesn’t mean perfect.

Next room is the living room. His childhood memories sit like exhibits in a museum: a bowl of crayons, books his mom would read him, a book of mazes he would spend hours going through, and the plush toy he’d hug when he was scared.

He feels something hard in his throat, which he quickly pushes down. He’s here for a reason: he’s going to save himself and his sister, and give them both the childhood they deserved.

He stares at his childhood memorabilia, lost in thought, until...

“...I came down for a glass of water.”

Oh.

He turns around, and sees himself.

“I’m Leo.” The name feels like a punch in the gut. “Are you friends with my daddy?”

“...kind of,” he says. Looking at his kid self is like looking into a funhouse mirror. It’s everything he could have been, could have had. If he hadn’t been trans, if his father hadn’t gone to jail, if his mother hadn’t died, if, if, if...

His voice is deeper, now, but they both have the same eyes.

“I think my daddy's sleeping.” Leo says quietly, fidgeting with his glass.

Len takes a deep breath. Ever since he joined the Legends, he’s been imagining this moment, imagining going back in time and fixing the trainwreck of his life before it ever went off the rails. This is the chance people only dream of: to give themselves the advice before they even needed it. He can't risk losing this.

He crouches down in front of Leo. He barely even processes them as himself: no, this is someone else, someone else with his eyes and his body who lived there, before he showed up and ruined everything. They’re a little kid who is going to have a very, very hard life, unless he fixes all of this now.

“Can I tell you something, Leo?” The name tastes like acid in his mouth. “It's important.” Leo nods. “Don't ever let anyone hurt you. Ever. Not here,” he points to his head, “and especially not here,” he finishes, pointing at Leo’s heart. “No matter what, you always have to look out for yourself, okay?” His eyes burn. “You understand?”

“I think so.”

Len doesn’t hear the footsteps behind him until a gun clicks.

“You get the hell away from my kid, you son of a bitch,” the voice that haunted his childhood snarls

“...why don't you go on up to bed? Go on.” Leo nods quietly and walks away. Snart turns around, giving a piercing stare as he stands up to face his dad.

“Talk fast, or you take a bullet. What're you doing in my home?” Lewis Snart roughly angles the kitchen light in his face, gesturing aggressively with his pistol.

 _Is this supposed to be intimidating? He really_ was _a shitty criminal._

“A favor. For you.” He reaches down into his pocket.

“Watch it!” Lewis hisses, tightening his grip on the gun.

“Relax.” Len pulls out the emerald, leisurely flashing it in the light.

Lewis gapes like a fish. “...how the hell did you get-”

“Two days from now, you try to steal this and you get arrested, and you spend five years in Iron Heights.” He can almost hear Rip lecturing him about damaging the timeline, but he’s not turning back now.

“What are you talking about?” He’s a shitty thief _and_ a shitty liar. Stellar role model.

“Cut the crap. We both know if I go down to the basement right now, I'll find floor plans for the Central City museum. Let's just say I've saved you the trouble... and from being arrested.” You’re welcome, he adds silently, slamming it down on a stack of old newspapers unceremoniously.

Lewis lowers his gun, studying him like a map. “How do you know all this?”

Len moves towards him, voice low and threatening. “The same way I'll know if you even _think_ of raising a hand to your wife, or your son. I know who you are. I know the man you become. It's all I can do to keep from ending you right here, right now.” He considers it briefly: a sweet fantasy, a life free of torment or pain, but, like sugar, it dissolves. “But, if I do, that means my sister's never born, so you get a pass.”

He’d do anything for Lisa. Even this.

He turns on his heel, and storms out.

 

Lewis stands, motionless, with a priceless emerald on his dinner table. It’s dead silent, again: no evidence of anything or anyone out of the ordinary. He runs over what the man said again, trying to figure out who he was and how he could possibly have know, and- wait.

“Your sister?” he says to the empty room.

He pauses again, driving his eyebrows together. “...my _son_?”

 

 

❄

 

Jax and Mick are waiting outside the jumpship. Mick is cleaning his gun, unphased, and Jax just looks relieved to no longer be alone with a pyromaniac.

“Looks like you didn't write yourself out of the timeline.” Mick grunts. It's as close to a touching 'welcome back’ as he's going to get.

“Looks like.” Len says, hurriedly.

Jax picks up on the uncertainty in his voice. “...but?”

“I don't know, I just thought maybe things would... feel differently.” He doesn’t claim to be an expert on time travel, but his memories of his father are very much the same, and are very much bad.

“The Englishman says it takes time for time to change.” Mick points out. It’s almost comforting, which is rare from him.

Len nods.

“...What _were_ you trying to change?” Damn it, Jax.

“My dad was never father of the year,” he begins slowly, remembering the beer bottles piled in the sink, “But at least he never raised a hand to any of us.” His past is on a need-to-know basis, and right now, that’s all Jax needs.

“Until he went to prison,” Jax adds, connecting the dots anyway. He smiles. “Which... now he won't.”

Len will have to offer him a job, one of these days. He would make a _very_ good rogue.

“Let's get out of here.”

 

❄

 

Len studies the news clippings on the screen like a hawk, fiddling with the newspaper he managed to snag.

_Central City Museum First Stop For Maximilian Diamond._

1975 was before superheros, and it was a simpler time for the news industry.

“Maybe you didn't understand me: I asked for the new timeline, Gideon.”

“This is the new timeline,” Gideon's cheery voice informs him. “Two days from now, your father will be arrested trying to sell the Maximilian Emerald to an undercover police officer.”

“Stupid son of a bitch,” he mutters, cold dread starting to settle in his gut.

“He'll be sentenced to five years in Iron Heights. Despite your intervention, his future remains unchanged.”

 _As does mine_ , he adds to himself. His ears ring.

Jax moves somewhere behind him. Snart hadn't noticed him enter, and he kicks himself mentally for letting someone sneak up on him twice.

“Hey, you tried to save him. That's gotta count for something.”

He doesn’t have the energy to explain he didn’t give a shit about his father: he was saving himself and his sister _from_ him, from the beatings and scars and _‘lessons’_ that never stopped, no matter how much they learned.

Jax still doesn’t need to know.

“Turns out, it doesn't.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is very much based on my own experiences with dysphoria! i also headcanon snart as gay and jewish but thats not really relevant here so... i didn't tag it.  
> its pretty much just a rewrite of his arc in blood ties, but from his point of view, and with him being trans as an added layer.  
> thanks!


End file.
